


Understand I'm a Sinner

by Maidenjedi



Category: The Office (US)
Genre: F/M
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2012-07-15
Updated: 2012-07-15
Packaged: 2017-11-10 00:55:45
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,746
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/460452
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Maidenjedi/pseuds/Maidenjedi
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Angela in the aftermath of 'The Duel' (Season 4)</p>
            </blockquote>





	Understand I'm a Sinner

**Author's Note:**

> Title from "Sinner" by Drowning Pool.

After Dwight pushed the bobblehead into the trash, Angela was torn between being outraged that he would throw away something that had cost her about $200 to have made, and devastated that he would so publicly scorn her without even coming over to talk to her.

The silence in the room was too much, and she found herself wishing Michael were there to convene an emergency meeting or something, just so there would be a distraction and some of the attention would be diverted away from her.

Most everyone was avoiding looking at her, or at Dwight, or Andy. Except Pam, who was looking at Angela with something like pity, something like commiseration, and that was the last straw. Pam was the biggest whore in the office, and Angela did not want pity from her.

She gathered her coat and purse and left the office, an hour before she was supposed to, and she half expected Dwight to chase after her, stop her, scoop her up in his arms and kiss her. But she got all the way to the parking lot without hearing any footsteps. She stood looking around dumbly, expecting to see her car, and then she remembered that Andy had driven her to work this morning and she sat down, hard, on the curb and started crying.

Phyllis was the first person to come and look for Angela, and she didn't say a word, she just tapped Angela's shoulder and pointed toward her own car. Before Angela could protest, Phyllis was climbing in and reaching over to unlock the passenger door, and Angela didn't even scowl disapprovingly as she got in and buckled her seatbelt. 

Phyllis didn't turn on the radio and Angela was tempted to reach over and do it herself, just to have some noise to distract her. It seemed like the events of the last two years were replaying in her head in perpetual loop, but in disconnected fragments that had her wondering if Dwight really did kill Sprinkles or if Andy had asked her to marry him at a gas station. 

At Angela's apartment, Phyllis turned off the car and turned to Angela. Here it comes, Angela thought, Phyllis' self-righteous speech chastizing me for everything, blaming me and no one else for this mess. Calling me a whore, which maybe I deserve. 

Instead, Phyllis just whispered, "If you need anything, give me a call." She fumbled around in her purse and brought out a somewhat smushed Hershey bar and a half-used pocket pack of Kleenex, and handed them to Angela. "I don't have anything else, and these aren't much, but chocolate and tissues, those are two things a girl should never be without."

It was a mark of how much the afternoon had taken out of Angela that all she did was nod, and barely whisper thanks as she got out of the car.

 

\--

 

Her apartment had never been a place that looked like anyone other than an old grammy lived there, and after being dumped by two men in one day, it was both comforting and sickening to her. Her cats meowed for food and she fed them, but she didn't pet and she didn't reach for them for hugs or kisses. She went to the couch and stretched out on it, still in her work clothes and with her make-up on. She fell asleep listening to the clock ticking and the cats playing, and dreamt of a wedding with a faceless groom.

When she woke up, it was after midnight, and her stomach was growling. There wasn't really anything in the fridge that looked appetizing. She checked her watch and thought hard, trying to overcome the fatigue that comes from a too-long nap to think of what might be open. The McDonald's in town had recently gone 24-hour. She hated McDonald's but as she thought about fries and a cheeseburger her mouth started watering. So she got her coat and purse and went.

Sure enough, the drive-through was open 24 hours, and this being Scranton, there was no one in line at the drive-thru, since it was almost one in the morning and it was a weeknight. Angela got fries and opted for a quarter-pounder (she hadn't eaten since breakfast) and a Coke. She thought briefly for a moment about the time she'd been double-dared to mix Jack Daniels into a large Coke like this one, and then she thought about the time she confessed to that incident in a small group and how the older women had looked at her as though she were the Whore of Babylon. She dumped out the Coke when she got home.

The quarter-pounder got cold and eventually Angela just tossed it in the garbage. She ate all the fries, though. She even licked her finger to get the salt out of the bottom.

She always had a weakness for fast food french fries. Dwight had figured that out once when he picked up Wendy's on his lunch break, and Angela made up excuses to walk behind him and snag a fry. Luckily, Jim and Pam and Oscar and some of the others had gone to Cugino's and there was no one to tease Angela or taunt Dwight for this behavior. After that day, Dwight would pick up some french fries when he came to Angela's house. It worked better than flowers for cheering her up after a bad day. 

Andy never did know about that, and he sent Angela a total of thirteen dozen roses over the course of just the first three months they were dating. 

The fries gone and the quarter-pounder thrown out, Angela looked at the clock and was surprised to realize it was almost two in the morning. She was never up this late, not since college (or rather, not since the last time Dwight spent the night). 

She picked up the phone and dialed Dwight's cell number. Surely he would be awake, maybe they could talk about what happened and maybe he would come over.

The phone rang fourteen and a half times. She hung up before the fifteenth ring could finish.

\--

By Sunday morning, Angela had slept a grand total of fourteen hours, and she went to church with a horrible headache. She looked like she felt, though the people at the Scranton Second Baptist church were not about to say anything about it to her face. 

Andy's conspicuous absence was something they had no qualms about bringing up, however. And why not? None of them knew what Angela had done to him. None of them had ever known Dwight (who would no more step foot in a Baptist church than he would miss that Friday's premiere of the final season of _Battlestar Galactica_ ). 

So she fielded the questions about Andy as best she could without giving away that they had broken up, that the wedding was off. She still had her ring on, out of a sense of defiance in the face of the inevitable. 

The sermon was about unconditional love (of course it was) and the pastor admonished the married couples to go home and evaluate their marriages in light of 1 Corinthians 13:7, and then reminded those who were engaged or even dating to do the same (he looked at the third pew, straight up the middle, expecting Angela's face and not finding it, because she was uncharacteristically sitting in the very back, on the right, behind a pillar).

She left before the offering and final hymn, and didn't meet anyone's questioning gaze.

\--

The call about a dress fitting on Saturday.

The trip to the grocery store when she ran into a giggling, lovey-dovey Phyllis and Bob Vance.

The third call from her mother about lodging for the wedding weekend.

Calling Dwight's cell phone another four times and him never answering.

The little humilations didn't seem to end, and the worst one by far was a phone call she got on Sunday night.

Angela had decided the cats needed baths (they didn't, they'd had them last weekend, but she was restless and bored and she didn't watch television on Sundays) and her hands were soaked and covered in soap when the phone rang. It didn't stop her from fumbling and nearly tripping as she ran to pick up the phone.

"Hello?"

Her voice was shaky, not at all confident or strong, and she knew Dwight would see through her and he would want to comfort her and....

"Hi, Angela?"

Not Dwight. 

"It's Pam."

And Pam did all the talking. She told Angela she knew what she was going through. Angela scoffed, thinking about how Pam's whorish behavior had driven Roy to physically threaten Jim, at the office of all places, and that just led to thinking about Dwight saving Jim and being so brave. Angela tried to listen to Pam then, hearing a lot about how a girl shouldn't be alone in times like this and how Angela could call Pam anytime, they could get coffee or go to a movie or whatever. And Pam paused, waiting for Angela to respond, and Angela opened her mouth just as she heard someone in the background. It had to be Jim, and it was an indecent hour, and Pam was just as whorish as ever, and Angela would never take advice from her. For once she didn't feel like listing off all the reasons why Pam was wrong. She just said thank you, Pam, and then call-waiting signaled.

She didn't even say goodbye to Pam.

"Hello?"

This time, it was a voice she knew.

"I am disconnecting this phone number. Do not try calling it again, or you will only hear an annoying tone and voice saying the number has been disconnected."

He didn't hang up.

"Dwight, I..."

"Save it. I know what you did."

Sprinkles flashed before her eyes. But that wasn't the same. 

Was it?

"I never meant to hurt you."

He didn't say anything. 

"Dwight?"

"I'm disconnecting this phone number."

And he hung up.

\--

Monday morning, Angela woke up with a headache and wanted badly to call in sick. She rarely ever did, except  
for certain days in her time of the month when she could barely walk and natural remedies were doing nothing  
to help. In all her time at Dunder Mifflin, it came out to a grand total of seven sick days, and none of them  
had occured since she and Dwight had been seeing each other. 

But she could not call in sick today. It would be cowardly, and weak.

So she French-braided her hair (because Dwight loved it and Andy hated it) and wore a white blouse buttoned  
all the way up and a light blue scarf (because Andy loved her in blue and Dwight wished she'd wear black). 

No one talked to her. Pam and Phyllis exchanged glances when Angela came in, and each one looked as though  
she wanted to say something, but Angela's patented icy glare was firmly in place and her entire demeanor  
screamed that no one should come near her. 

Even Kevin was more afraid of Angela than usual.

Dwight and Andy spent most of the day out on sales calls, and Michael was distracted by some big conference  
call with other regional managers in which he was supposed to teach them all about his cold call techniques.  
Pam finally did talk to Angela, tentatively asking her to lunch, but Angela ignored her and Pam went off  
with Jim instead. 

As usual, Angela planned to stay until six, intending to lock up. Michael had fled the office well before five, which was everyone else's cue to leave as well.

Except for Dwight.

It was as though they were trying to outlast one another, playing a game of chicken to see who would break first. Dwight had a longer commute than Angela, and probably had Mose waiting for him to come home, and Angela had the cats to think about. But neither was willing to give in.

Dwight finally came to Angela's desk at a quarter past seven. His face was clouded and his manner guarded.

"You should go home."

"You can't tell me what to do." She was in top form, alright. Dwight actually recoiled.

But he bounced right back.

"Actually, Miss Martin, yes I can. I am the assistant regional manager..."

"Assistant TO the regional manager."

"And I am the ranking employee in this office. You are not being paid overtime and you need to go home."

Angela waved her hand at the spreadsheet on her computer screen, showing payroll for the current period. "You're not being paid overtime either, Mr. Schrute."

He scowled, but the fire one might expect simply wasn't there. Angela, always able to hide her feelings, felt her resolve melting as she took in Dwight's appearance for the first time all day. He had bags under his eyes, he was pale (well, more so than usual), and he was unkempt. She knew perfectly well that was the same shirt he'd been wearing Friday, and it looked like it had spent the weekend crumpled in a ball in the corner of his room. 

"Surely you didn't do a sales call looking like that?" She didn't know she was going to say it out loud till the words were out, the tone not one bit condescending. Her teeth clicked as she shut her mouth and attempted to regain her trademark countenance.

Dwight closed his eyes. His shoulders slumped. Angela knew this posture; he usually assumed it when he  
thought he had failed Michael. He had looked like this the night Andy proposed to her. She had taken his hand and he kissed her and they gotten into this whole mess.

"I didn't go on a sales call. I just drove around. I didn't want to be here, Angela."

He opened his eyes and looked at her. "How could you do that to me?"

Angela's sense of right and wrong had always been fixed and rigid. Until she fell in love with Dwight, the world made a kind of sense to her only if she could assign every action to an absolute. Sex before  
marriage was wrong. Staying the night at a man's house without a chaperone was wrong. Cheating on your  
fiance was wrong, even if it was just stealing glances across the office.

Dwight was able to confuse her, because he was passionate about her. No one had ever been passionate about _her_ , not even poor Andy, who had no passions except Cornell and getting promoted over Dwight one day.

"I don't know," she said, "I don't know why I did it."

Dwight nodded. "I think I believe you. But you did it anyway. You slept with him." The last few words were slurred, his voice reluctant to sound out the syllables.

She nodded. She could at least admit it, even if she was fairly certain Dwight walked away calling her various four-letter words in German.

Dwight's phone number was never disconnected. Not that she would know that for certain; she always hung up before the first ring.

\--

There was not a happy ending in Angela Martin's love story.

She thought about quitting Dunder Mifflin. It was tax season, she could go to the IRS. 

But like most of the people in that office, she stayed for reasons she could never articulate, and she kept doing the work despite that nagging feeling for eight or nine hours a day that she may actually be in hell.

Eventually, Kevin would stop making cracks about whores, and Oscar would stop looking at her with a mix of pity and disgust, and Pam and Phyllis would stop asking if she wanted to get lunch or coffee. Angela would become part of the Dunder Mifflin scenery and her story part of the lore of the place that Toby used to quietly discourage eager sales applicants from joining in their collective insanity.

For now, Angela defied them all, worked on rebuilding her image as someone tough and utterly uncompromising. Of course they would call her a bitch, and maybe she was. But she was always seeking to atone for her sins, even the ones she never realized she was committing. She whispered prayers every so often for absolution that she was quite sure was out of her grasp for good.

And if she needed chocolate and a box of Kleenex from time to time, no one need be any the wiser.

 

\--

**Author's Note:**

> I went through a couple of versions of this, and I am still wrestling with Angela. What she did made a kind of sense to me, like she had always been so perfect and good and it had gotten her nowhere, and the idea of having two men vying for her affection like had happened to Pam appealed to her. I keep thinking that their situations weren't all that dissimilar, it was just that Angela, in her manipulative way, took it too far. 
> 
> Also, I think she was always in love with Dwight. I think she had no feelings for Andy whatsoever, beyond ways she could use him. I think Dwight's rejection hurt her, and Andy's was more of a relief in the long term.


End file.
